Maybe This...

I’m sitting here trying to write and failing miserably. This last sentence didn’t come out right the first few hundred times I wrote it. In fact it is not the first sentence at all anymore and this is not the same story. Now I’m writing a meta-fiction about the fiction that I can’t write at the moment. I don’t really even know what this is. Maybe it’s a stream of consciousness thing. I don’t know

There’s a YouTube video playing in the background while I type this. It’s an interview with a writer I have great admiration for, and I have so much admiration for this author and doubt in my own authorship that I refuse to mention the writer’s name. Everything he says is interesting, and well put. He knows his craft, and can tell you all the rules that writers go by when authoring a piece.

Right now he’s talking not talking about the rules, but it would fit this piece better if he were. I wish he were explaining how to implement the concept of “Show vs. Tell”, or the essential elements of a 3 act structure, or the proper way to construct compelling characters or narrative. He’s not doing this. If he were I’d probably lose interest before I understood the message well enough to understand and implement these tactics.

I don’t want to learn the rules. I want to play the game. I’ve never learned the rules before trying to play the game. This is a dull sports metaphor. I shouldn’t use a dull analogy to sports. Oops.

Right now this author is taking issue with one of the all too standard questions authors are always being asked. He is critiquing the insipid question he despises. I’m impressed as to how he skewers the vapid question in a way that completely deflates it. The question is like a beach-ball that appears to have mass, but now he has stabbed it and slashed it to shreds so that it becomes clear that this question never had any substance to it, and now it is left in refuse.

I don’t know why someone would read this. Maybe other people can relate to the way it has become impossible to do things you want to do without being distracted by things that seem more interesting, but don’t hold communicative import. Maybe this does hold communicative import somehow, and this piece is actually a testament as to how despite ourselves and all our distractions and media addictions there still some aspect of humanity within us all that used to be called a soul. Now of course we should all know that the word soul is reserved for the unscientific luddites, and the luddites do not read. Oops.

The video is over, and now another author is being interviewed. Somehow the algorithm of auto-play has selected another author that I’m quite fond of, but is very different from the previous one. I wonder now if these two authors are actually very different, or if they just differ in a small way which I am compelled to split hairs over. I hate phrases like that. “Split hairs over”. I don’t know if that is an idiom or a colloquialism, and I don’t care. I care that I don’t care though because I feel like I should care if I’m going to write or be considered a writer. I don’t want to just write. I want to be considered a writer. I don’t actually want to be considered a writer. I want to be considered a great writer. No I don’t. I want to be known by everyone forever as the greatest writer of all time.

I want it to be a fact that I am the best writer ever, in the same way that it is a fact that fish have gills and live in water. I don’t know why I made this analogy. It’s corny and prosaic. Maybe this is an anti-meta-writing piece. Maybe I’m making a point about how to write the way you’re not supposed to write, while writing in the way you are not supposed to in a way that makes it seem as if I’m writing the way one is supposed to. That’s kind of interesting to me. I couldn’t pull that kind of a trick off intentionally though. I don’t know all the ways you’re supposed to write properly, so it could only be by chance or some absurd exception that would be able to pull this off. Is off a preposition? I heard you’re not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition. Oops.

The spell check keeps fixing my typing errors. More often it fixes my inability to spell poly-syllable words. I just tried to write the word “polysyllableistic”, which is not a word apparently. Although the other day I wrote the word “kalopsia” and a squiggly red undine appeared beneath it. I felt like a god that was forced to live in hell. I was smarter than the computer, but inferior to it at the same time. Maybe that’s my message. Maybe this is about delusions of self vs the insufficiency of our reality. That’s actually pretty close to what it was I had meant to write about before I’d abandoned that notion to stumble my fingers over the keyboard to type this.

I don’t know what that makes this about though. Then again, maybe I do know. Maybe I could sense what this was going to be about all along, or maybe I’d figured it out along the way. Maybe I’m posing as if I’m smarter than I am. Maybe I’m playing dumb. Maybe I am dumb, or smart, or just something in between. Who’s to judge? The reader (you)? That’s not really a question; it’s a fragment and not a complete sentence. Sentences are supposed to be complete. Your thesis is supposed to be complete and thought-out before you sit down to begin writing too. I think I used “too” correctly there instead of “to”. These things are supposed to matter. Maybe that’s the idea here. Maybe things that are supposed to be a certain way shouldn’t be limited to what is supposed to be. Maybe things can just be what they are despite the whole “supposed to be” thing.

If this is supposed to be amusing it’s getting a bit long now. It might be far too long already and I just can’t see it because it’s coming from a place of my own overvalued bias. Maybe this is an exercise in self-consciousness and self-delusion. Maybe this is just failure incarnate. Maybe incarnate isn’t the right word. Oops.

I should stop writing whatever this is. There has to be something better to do than spew random thoughts out of my mind that have some intuitive or implicit meaning that I can’t quite come to terms with. Maybe that’s what this is about. Maybe this is about the failure of language, or the failure of thought, or the failure of communication, or…

Ok, now I am going to wrap this up. I may have some idea what this was all supposed to convey. It may indeed convey that supposed thing, or perhaps it failed. Maybe you understand it. Maybe I don’t. Maybe this will lead to something better. Maybe it has put me back into the headspace I can write from, and solved my unproductive problem. Maybe this isn’t about anything beyond that. Maybe it can be something despite what I’d intended it to be. Maybe this will take on its own emergent meaning. Maybe that’s it. Maybe not. Maybe I’ve just jinxed this meta piece by being too meta. Maybe its my own efforts that ruin things. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe there are too many maybes here. I think there are to many maybes, but then maybe that’s just it. Maybe I’m still doing what I shouldn’t do. Maybe I’m trying to wrap this up in a way that I can tag it with the ending line oops, and now I’m detracting from what would have been a better piece if I’d just ended this another way. Maybe this last sentence is a run-on and reflects the overall problem I’m stuck in. Maybe I should edit this thing down a bit. Oops.

Maybe I’m satisfied with my last oops, and think it would be funny to add this line of post text, and now I’m detracting from the not all that funny nature of the joke. Oops.